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> IMHO in order for AI to be truly useful, we need to be able to trust it. A common response to this by AI advocates is to point out that humans lie all the ti

> IMHO in order for AI to be truly useful, we need to be able to trust it. A common response to this by AI advocates is to point out that humans lie all the time, as long as the AI lies less than humans (debatable at this current point anyway) its an improvement. I think what that forgets is the importance of context. We all know humans are perfectly capable of lying, but we don't generally expect that of software. If your compiler lied about your code being valid, I doubt the general response would be "meh, its only done that once, I've lied far more than that"

truthreplicator 3y ago
I suspect he posited trust in juxtaposition to reliability, rather than veracity.
cageface 3y ago
The other difference is that over time we build up a network of people we consider to be knowledgeable and honest. Current LLMs can never match that because their output is controlled guessing.
woeirua 3y ago
More importantly humans have ways to detect deception from other humans, be it through body language or other cues. With only text it is very hard to determine whether the model is lying to you or not.
- thayne 3y ago
  Even in text, there is more context. For example, I am more likely to trust the wikipedia article about a deeply technical topic than an article about politics or a celebrity, because the technical article is far more likely to only be edited by people who are actually very knowledgeable on the topic, and there is very little incentive to lie (in general, there are exceptions).
dreamcompiler 3y ago
> A common response to this by AI advocates is to point out that humans lie all the time, as long as the AI lies less than humans (debatable at this current point anyway) its an improvement. This is also Elon Musk's justification for self-driving cars: "They make fewer mistakes than humans and are therefore safer." It's true that self-driving cars avoid many of the mistakes of human drivers, but they also invent whole new categories of fatal mistakes that humans rarely make. And that's why Musk's argument is garbage.
- alex_sf 3y ago
  If the goal is to reduce the number of fatal mistakes, why is that argument garbage?
  - necovek 3y ago
    Because it's unacceptable to replace a perfectly good driver in control of their vehicle with a vehicle that might just randomly kill them. Traffic accidents don't happen randomly at all. If you are not too tired, drunk or using any substances, and not speeding, your chances of causing a serious traffic accident are miniscule. These are all things you can control (one way or another). You can also adjust your driving to how you are feeling (eg take extra looks around you when you are a bit tired).
    - xtreme 3y ago
      This feels like the trolley problem applied at scale. Will you deploy a self driving system that is perfect and stops all fatal accidents but kills one randomly selected person everyday?
      - necovek 3y ago
        Nope: there is no moral justification to potentially kill a person not participating in the risky activity of driving just so we could have other people be driven around. Would you sign up for such a system if you can volunteer to participate in it, with now those random killings being restricted to those who've signed up for it, including you? In all traffic accidents, there is some irresponsibility that led to one event or the other, other than natural disasters that couldn't be predicted. A human or ten is always to blame. Not to mention that the problems are hardly equivalent. For instance, a perfect system designed to stop all accidents would likely have crawled to a stop: stationary vehicles have pretty low chances of accidents. I can't think of anyone who would vote to increase their chances of dying without any say in it, and especially not as some computer-generated lottery.
consilient 3y ago
> If your compiler lied about your code being valid, I doubt the general response would be "meh, its only done that once, I've lied far more than that" Any language with an unsound type system will do this occasionally. This probably includes a majority of all code being written today: C, Java, and Typescript are all unsound.
worrycue 3y ago
> A common response to this by AI advocates is to point out that humans lie all the time That’s true. But when someone lies frequently, we stop trusting them.

truthreplicator 3y ago

I suspect he posited trust in juxtaposition to reliability, rather than veracity.

cageface 3y ago

The other difference is that over time we build up a network of people we consider to be knowledgeable and honest. Current LLMs can never match that because their output is controlled guessing.

woeirua 3y ago

More importantly humans have ways to detect deception from other humans, be it through body language or other cues. With only text it is very hard to determine whether the model is lying to you or not.

thayne 3y ago
Even in text, there is more context. For example, I am more likely to trust the wikipedia article about a deeply technical topic than an article about politics or a celebrity, because the technical article is far more likely to only be edited by people who are actually very knowledgeable on the topic, and there is very little incentive to lie (in general, there are exceptions).

dreamcompiler 3y ago

> A common response to this by AI advocates is to point out that humans lie all the time, as long as the AI lies less than humans (debatable at this current point anyway) its an improvement. This is also Elon Musk's justification for self-driving cars: "They make fewer mistakes than humans and are therefore safer." It's true that self-driving cars avoid many of the mistakes of human drivers, but they also invent whole new categories of fatal mistakes that humans rarely make. And that's why Musk's argument is garbage.

alex_sf 3y ago
If the goal is to reduce the number of fatal mistakes, why is that argument garbage?
- necovek 3y ago
  Because it's unacceptable to replace a perfectly good driver in control of their vehicle with a vehicle that might just randomly kill them. Traffic accidents don't happen randomly at all. If you are not too tired, drunk or using any substances, and not speeding, your chances of causing a serious traffic accident are miniscule. These are all things you can control (one way or another). You can also adjust your driving to how you are feeling (eg take extra looks around you when you are a bit tired).
  - xtreme 3y ago
    This feels like the trolley problem applied at scale. Will you deploy a self driving system that is perfect and stops all fatal accidents but kills one randomly selected person everyday?
    - necovek 3y ago
      Nope: there is no moral justification to potentially kill a person not participating in the risky activity of driving just so we could have other people be driven around. Would you sign up for such a system if you can volunteer to participate in it, with now those random killings being restricted to those who've signed up for it, including you? In all traffic accidents, there is some irresponsibility that led to one event or the other, other than natural disasters that couldn't be predicted. A human or ten is always to blame. Not to mention that the problems are hardly equivalent. For instance, a perfect system designed to stop all accidents would likely have crawled to a stop: stationary vehicles have pretty low chances of accidents. I can't think of anyone who would vote to increase their chances of dying without any say in it, and especially not as some computer-generated lottery.

consilient 3y ago

> If your compiler lied about your code being valid, I doubt the general response would be "meh, its only done that once, I've lied far more than that" Any language with an unsound type system will do this occasionally. This probably includes a majority of all code being written today: C, Java, and Typescript are all unsound.

worrycue 3y ago

> A common response to this by AI advocates is to point out that humans lie all the time That’s true. But when someone lies frequently, we stop trusting them.